


Not to be Spoken, Nor Sung, Nor Whispered to Anyone (Patient Love)

by maddieaddam



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Awkward Crush, Canon-Typical Violence, Friends to Lovers, Gay Panic (but pretty mild), Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mob Violence, POV Alternating, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Slash, Religious Guilt, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-09-01 21:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8638891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maddieaddam/pseuds/maddieaddam
Summary: The road from Aldbourne to Bastogne is paved with ghosts from the past, confused smiles, too-long looks, frantic heartbeats, quick steps away, hesitant steps forward, and a quiet patience that breaks at just the right time – or at least, it is for Babe Heffron and Doc Roe.





	1. You Learn to Need the Things That Stop you Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction inspired by, and intended only to represent, the roles in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers as played by the actors. No disrespect is meant to the real men of Easy Company. 
> 
> This will be a multi-parter, but once I got entrenched enough in the story to know with some confidence where I would take it, I decided I wanted to see how the first chapter would go over. Please note that I intentionally adjusted the timeline on some of the events in the episode Replacements to suit my own needs, but there won't be any major deviation in the plot of the series itself.

At first, Eugene doesn’t have much interest in the replacements. None of the Toccoa men do unless they’re the sort to knock a new guy’s legs out from under him for fun, and Eugene is certainly not that. The ones who keep a greater distance most likely don’t want to form friendships that could be even more fleeting than the ones they had with the men for whom these replacements will stand in – _that’s_ the answer for Eugene, who hasn’t even come to befriend any of the other men from Camp Toccoa in their time together. Thankfully, people are respectful about his aloof and rather taciturn nature, appreciative when he patches them back together without pressing for more.

They must understand, he thinks to himself as he sips at the beer he’s been nursing all night and watches the other Easy Company men make the most of their leisure time in Aldbourne. They must see how much more horrible it would be to lose a friend if that man also died due to your own failure; with all of their lives in his hands, Doc Roe has more vital concerns than can be smoothed over by a winning personality or a moment of friendly intimacy. 

And he never questions that attitude – that necessary truth – for a second, until he shifts his gaze to a group of men playing darts and spots a flash of unfamiliar red hair. 

_(Vibrantly red hair flashing in his peripheral vision all over the construction site, as if it were attached to a bird of paradise rather than a slender teenager only a year or two older than Eugene Roe, another very early public school dropout working to help his family through the later years of the Great Depression -)_

Now _that_ is something the other men wouldn’t be likely to understand, the fact that Eugene’s taken special notice of the redheads in their company and learned the finer details of each shade of ginger, but it’s not the sort of thing he’ll ever feel compelled to share or explain even to the closest of hypothetical friends. If his pulse kicked up a notch or two the first time he saw Lieutenant Winters (which has yet to _stop_ happening, but he’s also such an exemplary man and leader that he’d be one of the more difficult men to ignore even with a less remarkable shade of hair), or his grin upon hearing one of Donald Malarkey’s boisterous fits of laughter lasted a bit too long, the reasons weren’t, and aren’t, anyone else’s business. 

_(- dazzling smile, too white to be believed; easy laughter at the slightest provocation, not insincere but a mark of how easily he held and maintained a cheerful mood; curious green eyes following Eugene as he worked, but never interrupting the diligent boy until -)_

This replacement’s hair is brighter than Winters’s, lighter than Malarkey’s. He’s got no sign of freckles, at least not on his face or neck, but he’s as pale as all the (very small handful of) redheads Eugene has ever known. Against that skin his eyes are startlingly dark, and his face is slender enough that his smile seems to split it right in two. 

He’s a bit gangly, a bit overeager, everything about him distinctly reminiscent of a playful puppy. Eugene thinks he’s beautiful.

_(- until a social call after work that Eugene didn’t know was a date - who would ever assume that of plans made on a construction site in late-1930s Louisiana? – after which the beautiful redhead came back to his apartment and got him pressed up against the wall with a solid thigh between his legs and a hot tongue prodding at his lips -)_

Eugene also _knows_ he’s dangerous because of that.

_(- “I won’t tell no one, but never, ever do nothin’ like that again,” Eugene told him calmly; only later, alone in his bed with no distractions and no company but his thoughts, did he face the events of the evening, poring over them again and again until his vision blurred around the edges and he bucked up into his hand harder than he ever had before -)_

It’s almost mesmerising to watch him interact with men like Guarnere, Luz, Compton, Toye; he’s laughing and smiling as confidently as the Toccoa men, taking the odd bit of ridicule with good-natured sheepishness that will only endear him to these men even more. He belongs already, so completely that if Eugene weren’t so confident in his mental catalogue of the company, he wouldn’t single out the young man as a replacement at all. Not compared to the others huddled together at their own tables, their every action hesitant, forever looking for approval they’ll never find. 

_(- it took weeks of curling in on himself in bed every night after the memories had brought him to completion yet again, feeling sick and confused and dirty somewhere deep below his skin, before they faded enough to stop tormenting him and he found he once again had the strength to look that beautiful redhead in the eye; a week later, they finished the job and Eugene never saw him again.)_

Eugene is watching him so closely, with such intense concentration, that he manages to miss the fact that the redhead is looking right back for several long moments; a jolt of panic seizes him when the eye contact finally registers, but the redhead only smiles, lopsided and a bit cautious but still suffused with friendly warmth. Trying to will his hands not to shake, he offers a wan smile and nod in return, then directs his attention clear across the room. As soon as enough time has passed for Eugene to feel confident that the amicable replacement must have forgotten his blunder, he’ll slide out a side exit unseen and unnoticed.

With any luck, by the time that replacement sees him again, he’ll have lost all memory of Eugene Roe and believe they’re meeting anew.

*

“Hey, George, who’s that? Another new guy?”

 _Replacement_ is something of a dirty word in the army - Babe was warned about that in camp, and it’s proven to be very true now that he’s among the men of the 101st Airborne’s Easy Company. He’s been lucky (he’d like to say “smooth,” but Bill found him when he had no thought of insinuating himself, and he knows damn well that Bill is the one paving the way for his stress-free introduction to the others) enough to integrate naturally, but that just means he’s even more careful to avoid the word, not wanting to put too fine a point on his status in this situation.

He can’t figure out the guy looking at him from a nearby table, though. Most of the other replacements are moving in tight circles, protecting themselves from the very men with whom they hope to ingratiate themselves just in case things go south, but this guy’s just… alone. Doesn’t make sense for a replacement or a veteran. There’s nothing all that melancholy about the look of him, none of the uncomfortable air that often leaves no doubt as to the reasons why a loner has wound up alone; he looks _serious_ , almost grave when surrounded by his more light-hearted compatriots, but that just makes the hint of a smile Babe gets out of him even more magnetic. 

By the time he gestures to the man’s table to indicate who he means, the subject of his curiosity is already looking elsewhere with that same absorbed attention. Does he _always_ look that way, then – is everything in the room as fascinating to him as Babe appeared to be, or nothing? Both options leave him feeling childishly put out.

“Who?” Luz’s eyes follow Babe’s gesture, and he lets out a snort of amusement when he sees the answer. “Don’t try it with him, Babe, you’re never gonna break that ice. Doc’s a good guy and a hell of a medic, but he’s not what you’d call chatty.”

“Medic, huh…” His interest only stoked by the warning, Babe turns his attention back to the man they call Doc. Now, with the man’s role identified, Babe thinks it’s not so much of a surprise; he’s slight in a different way than most of the skinnier soldiers, built every bit as small as he is slim, which makes him look compact rather than coltish but also not likely to fill out. Babe finds that his gaze snags on the long, slim fingers wrapped around Doc’s pint glass, much easier to imagine pulling stitches through torn skin than pulling a trigger. 

“Babe -” He’s barely aware of Luz’s voice trying to bring his attention back until a light punch to his shoulder forces the issue, making him blink almost sleepily at the sight of George’s smirk. “- _Heffron!_ Are you even listening?”

“He’s doing good if he’s already figured out not to listen to you, Luz,” Toye remarks in his dry, sandpaper-scrape voice, which earns _him_ a punch that Luz pulls just before it can make contact. “Smart man. You can’t just ignore him, Babe - it encourages him. He’ll talk both your fuckin’ ears off and that’s not getting you a ticket home.”

The way Luz grins at Joe Toye’s casual insults makes something twist uncomfortably in Babe’s chest; he’s lucky to be as well accepted as he is already, it’s true, but he’s not really _one of them_ yet. These sorts of jokes almost feel as though they’re at his expense, playing on the fact that he doesn’t know such things yet. 

“You talked to the medic before, Joe?” Babe asks, not at all self-conscious about his interest, because isn’t it natural for him to be curious about his new company mates? And someone sitting alone like that, brow furrowed as though he’s carrying the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders while everyone around him drinks and carouses, is a natural target for that curiosity.

Toye doesn’t seem to think anything of it either, turning to regard Doc with an impassive glance. “Doc Roe? Yeah, I took two goddamn grenades to the face in Normandy, I’ve talked to Doc. He still asks how I’m feeling every time he sees me.”

“George says he doesn’t talk to no one.”

“I thought you learned this guy was full of shit already?” Toye laughs and cuffs Luz in the back of the head, and that combined with his comment just starts them on another round of cheerful insults, leaving Babe to roll his eyes to the ceiling with his tongue tucked irritably into his cheek. If he’s actually learned anything from these two, it’s that he’ll never get a straight answer out of one when the other is present. 

He sweeps his eyes over the room and feels a strange tug of nervousness at the base of his stomach, like a hook dragging his attention back to Doc Roe’s table – he’s not there anymore. Babe’s mind must have registered it before his eyes could. When the hell did he leave? How many exits does this place have?

“‘ey, Babe! You wanna know about Doc?” Bill’s the one calling after him now, and he feels like he’d get at least a slightly better answer from Bill, but the matter’s become more pressing now that Doc’s disappeared from the bar. He doesn’t want to end the night not having introduced himself to someone who seems like he could be the most interesting member of the company.

If he’s honest with himself, though, Doc Roe _became_ so interesting thanks to that look he fixed on Babe for so long: he seemed unabashed until Babe saw the realization that he was being watched back click into place in his smoky blue-grey eyes, which suggests that he was actually too enthralled to notice smaller details like Babe meeting his stare. Who wouldn’t be flattered by that?

… well, a lot of guys, sure. Maybe most. But Babe’s man enough to take an implicit compliment from another guy as long as it doesn’t come with a physical pass at him, and Doc doesn’t look like the type _or_ sound like it from what the others said. No one who isolates himself like that as a matter of course is going to throw a stranger up against the wall and kiss him or something.

Babe’s not sure why he’s still struggling to shake the mental image he’s conjured up for himself with that thought when he spots a compact, black-haired figure in a dress uniform walking away from the building. No time to worry about it now, he decides, not when he’s finally spotted his target.

*

“Doc? Doc Roe?”

The sound of someone shouting for him hasn’t yet become such a constant litany in Eugene’s mind that he hears it in his sleep, in perfect silence and solitude, would likely keep hearing it in the vacuum of a black hole – before Bastogne, where _Medic!_ truly starts to make his blood run cold as the snow and his breath catch cruel as the wind through the trees, it’s just curious to hear heavy footfalls from behind him and his name called out in an effort to pause his steps.

It’s Bill Guarnere, he thinks at first, missing the timbre of the strange voice because that accent is so closely tied to one person in the company for him. But he’s only just catching up to the fact that the pitch was off for Guarnere when a hand claps down on his right shoulder and causes him to spin around so fast that his sight gives a brief but violent lurch to one side; when it rights itself, all he can see is red hair and a smile too brilliant to be borne. 

“Shit, sorry,” the replacement says with a nervy little laugh, almost what Eugene would classify as a giggle. “Did I startle ya? Thought you musta heard me coming.”

“I -” Eugene starts to explain, then realizes he doesn’t have much of an explanation for his reaction, so he gives a half-hearted shrug instead. “S’alright.”

Try as he might, Eugene can’t place the look the young man gives him at that. There’s some flicker of surprise in his expression, but what could’ve surprised him in that single word is impossible to guess, and then a new light in his eyes that gives Eugene the strange (but familiar) feeling he shouldn’t try to figure out any more.

That’s just paranoia. He’s remembered too much already tonight, drawn too many comparisons, and now he’s seeing them where they don’t exist.

“Oh, good!” With another of those breathless laughs, the replacement thrusts a hand out between them, his grin quirking up a bit higher on one side as it did when they made eye contact in the bar. “Babe Heffron. That’s what they call you, right, Doc Roe?”

 _Babe?_ Does he really want to be called Babe, as a name?

“Yeah,” Eugene says, carefully not showing any reaction to that introduction other than to accept _Babe’s_ hand and give it a single, firm shake. “Apparently all the medics get called Doc. Some kinda tradition. It’s – my name’s Eugene.”

Heffron’s – yes, he’s already rejected the idea of calling this man Babe, regardless of whether or not he’s so comfortable with the nickname himself to use it as his introduction to a stranger – _Heffron’s_ strange expression keeps changing the longer they talk. His big, dark eyes have narrowed a little, as though he’s trying to see Eugene from a great distance rather than what Eugene would call a bit too close, and the angle of his mouth seems more thoughtful than tipped into a full-fledged smile now. It’s like Eugene is something over which he really has to puzzle rather than a man he just –

\- wait, Eugene thinks for the first time. Did Heffron follow him out here? How did he find him so quickly, and why did he sound like he was looking for him?

“Eugene,” Heffron says with a peculiar warmth in his voice that’s probably just the vocal equivalent of those friendly grins Eugene kept spotting on his face while he played darts against Compton. “Good to meet ya, Gene. How come you didn’t say hi in there? I was just comin’ to introduce myself and you were already gone.”

He’s flustered before he can convince himself there’s no reason to feel flustered, his cheeks even growing hot enough to make him worry that he might be blushing. It’s rude, not friendly, calling him out like that when he obviously wasn’t comfortable enough to approach, but he can’t tear his focus away from the fact that Heffron not only took note of him, but also was compelled to approach before he made that impossible.

Later, he’ll finally catch up to the fact that Heffron nicknamed him a split-second after hearing his full name – not a troubling nickname, considering it’s what he most often gets called at home, but quite an intimate gesture for a first meeting. At least in his mind.

“Guess I got distracted.” The answer seems like a neutral one, much more neutral than anything even approaching the truth, but it causes Heffron’s smile to slip fully off his face for the first time. Finally allowing his own impassive expression to shift in response, he tilts his head to one side in confusion, feeling what he knows is a deep furrow between his eyebrows settle into its all too common place; that particular frown line has always been so entrenched on his forehead that his _granmé_ used to say he must’ve been born with the worries of an old man when he was little more than five years old. 

And for some reason, _that_ not only brings Heffron’s smile back, but also makes him laugh with absolute delight. They’ve only known each other a few minutes and Eugene is already sure the man’s beyond any logical understanding. 

“You looked so worried,” Heffron sputters through his laughter, his cheeks suddenly much pinker than the temperature of the night air can explain. His eyes are also too bright, his grin too soft, and he takes a step toward Eugene for what can’t be any good reason.

Eugene reflexively steps back, reinforcing the distance between them. “That’s just my face,” he says, and he’s immediately ashamed at how sheepish he sounds when he meant for his tone to be sharp, even acerbic. It coaxes another laugh out of Heffron, one that can’t be called anything other than a giggle. 

“You’re somethin’ else, huh, Gene?”

Before Eugene can answer, or even think of what Heffron might be saying he is, another voice cuts them off – “There he is! Babe! Why the hell’d you run off?” – and this time it _is_ Bill Guarnere, followed by Joe Toye and George Luz. Rather than boisterous and cheerful as they were back in the bar, now the three of them seem to trail a column of storm clouds over their heads as they jog over to meet up with Heffron. “Oh,” Guarnere adds at the last moment when he finally sees Eugene there, “hey, Doc.”

“Guarnere,” he says with a clipped nod, then: “Luz, Toye.” Suddenly they’re all exchanging glances, lips twitching to hold back almost-smiles, and Eugene wonders wildly if this has all been the set up for some sort of prank and that’s why it makes no sense until Toye finally speaks up.

“You assholes missed the big news,” he grumbles. “We’re shippin’ out again, sounds like right away or close enough to it.”

“What, already?” Heffron’s gaze sharpens, his mouth drawing into a solemn line, and Eugene feels an unexpected spark of respect for him; if he’s scared by the news, he’s hiding it behind the mask of his sombre expression very well.

Although he also finds, just as unexpectedly, that he doesn’t like that expression on Heffron. The sweet-faced redhead is more naturally suited to a smile. 

“They say anything else?” Eugene adds, knowing his own face has undoubtedly settled into the frown that really does spread across his _entire_ face rather than just his mouth, and Toye shakes his head in response. 

“Jack shit. Not like we need to know or anything, right? Lip’s starting to spring this shit on us all the time like Sobel used to spring Curahee outta nowhere, I swear he likes doin’ it too.”

At this point, Toye’s constant monologue of annoyance is hardly new or anything at all like alarming to Eugene, so he just gives him a light clap on the arm and a slight upward twist of his lips. “You’ll survive him too, Joe. Just keep an eye out for grenades and jump th’other way from ‘em.”

Eugene’s rare flashes of extremely dry humor aren’t quite as familiar to any of the other Easy men yet, not like Toye’s grumbling or Luz’s wisecracking. A stony silence follows his words, all of the men around him staring in bafflement until they realize what’s happened and burst into gales of laughter in perfect sync. 

“Doc gets in a surprise right hook!” Luz cries in delight, which causes Toye to cuff him in the back of the head, and it all feels so brotherly and amicable that Eugene’s taken off-guard by an agonizing pang in his chest as he finds himself wishing his time with the men could always be like this. He never knew it could be so simple. He barely knows what inspired him to tease Joe Toye like that, other than the fact that the line popped into his head.

While he’s lost in his own thoughts, most of the others seem to decide that it’s time to head back to barracks, and he murmurs absent-minded goodbyes without really noticing that they’ve left one behind. Namely, one Babe Heffron.

“My first jump,” Heffron says, a propos of nothing but with such weight in the words that Eugene finds his attention drawn back to him by that natural caretaker’s instinct he never knew he possessed until he treated his first wound. Heffron’s allowing Eugene just a tiny glimpse into the full magnitude of his worry, and that fact alone renders the whys behind his choice of confidant irrelevant; he needs the sort of brisk, almost bracing comfort suited to a soldier about to face combat for the first time, and he’s chosen Eugene for the task.

He looks right into Heffron’s eyes for the first time since they accidentally met in the bar, a direct and evocative stare, and gives another crisp single nod.

“See you on the ground, Heffron.”

Seeing the smile return to Heffron’s face at what seems like double wattage makes Eugene let out a sharp, startled breath through his nostrils, like he’s been struck in the solar plexus. “Gene,” Heffron sighs with a trace of petulance behind his smile, “call me _Babe_.”

“Heffron,” he replies after a moment, when he’s regained his wits, “call me Doc Roe.”

Yet again, he’s got no idea where the urge to tease Heffron comes from, but he walks away once the words are out and finds himself smiling against all good sense when he hears Heffron curse just loudly enough to be audible in his wake. 

Maybe sometimes, _sometimes_ , he can afford a bit of camaraderie with the men. Even pretty, redheaded Heffron. Maybe it won’t be as dangerous as he thinks.


	2. Oh Son, You May Be Lost in More Ways Than One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babe struggles with the complex questions that arise from beginning his tour of action on liberated neutral land, rather than in true enemy territory. Eugene struggles with how cute Babe is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a work of fiction inspired by, and intended only to represent, the roles in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers as played by the actors. No disrespect is meant to the real men of Easy Company.

The moment Babe feels the plane’s engine rumble to life all around him, setting up a vibration that moves from the soles of his jump boots to his helmet and he swears even jars a few teeth loose in his mouth on the way up, he feels less like a paratrooper and more like Jonah in the belly of the whale. Part of him genuinely expects the walls to ripple under the force of the vibrations if they get any more intense, just like clenching muscle rather than steel. Sure, he’s done jump training to earn his wings, but somehow this just feels more real even in its earliest stages. Everything feels a bit more acute.

He’s not scared, though, he’s pleased to note: or he doesn’t seem to be, heart rate about where it should be, palms dry, stomach not showing any signs of queas –

“- Jesus Christ, what the _fuck_ is it doing?!” Babe really doesn’t mean to cry out like that, but he’s caught off-guard when his stomach suddenly drops to his toes, lurches up into his throat, then levels off in some odd middle ground and hovers as though it’s been set adrift among his other organs. He’s gripping the pack on his chest so tight that his knuckles ache when he glances over at Bull Randleman beside him, who has a look on his face that wouldn’t be out of place on the world’s most disappointed dad. 

“Takin’ off, Babe,” he mutters, or comes as close to muttering as he can when he needs to scream over the roar of the engines. “Just like training, you’re just jumpy is all. Keep your head on an’ you’ll be fine.”

Keep his head on. Simple orders. He just can’t figure out _how_ when he looks around the plane and sees only ghostly faces all around him, their eyes like black pits regardless of their shade thanks to the plane’s eerie darkness. Babe is not a man who’s prone to inventive flights of panic, but there’s something so nightmarish about the whole picture that he squeezes his eyes shut, sensing that he has no hope of bringing himself down unless he wipes his sensory slate clean as best he can.

_See you on the ground, Heffron._

That’s Gene Roe’s voice, slow and resonant and so deep that Babe just blinked in disbelief the first time he heard it, because he couldn’t comprehend that sound coming from such a small man. The memory of those words resurfaces with such clarity that it makes his eyes pop open again, but this time he doesn’t see the other men around him waiting for the jump; instead, he sees stern eyes the dark, liquid silver of mercury staring right into his, not even allowing him the _option_ of fear in the face of such a complete vote of confidence. He feels quite sure he wouldn’t remember _you can do it_ or _good luck_ so keenly, but _see you on the ground, Heffron…_

Yeah. Damn right he will, and Babe’s gonna find him once their feet have touched ground to make sure of it.

By the time that red light near the door flashes on and Bull moves to get everyone on their feet, Babe’s never felt more ready to jump out of an airplane and fight a war in his life. This entire business of being a soldier hits him in different ways at different times, and often it’s just as drastically contradictory as this, his mood flipping from panic to anticipation in a heartbeat. Maybe everyone endures the same mental chaos in their early days, he’s not sure; one thing he’s come to learn about the people around him, a fact that’s only seemed to intensify since he left camp and joined Easy Company properly, is that the vast majority in any environment tend to have a better poker face than he does. 

_Nine, okay!_ Comes the shout from two spots behind Babe, and then right at his shoulder: “Eight, okay!” Miller hollers, giving Babe his cue to do the same for Garcia. Babe feels an odd urge to give Garcia a squeeze to the shoulder, some encouraging gesture before they leap, but the last thing any of them needs right now is distraction. He’s sure the men in front of and behind him are running through their training from top to bottom just as he is, making one last check to ensure it’s been emblazoned on their memories without error. 

The cold, hard slap of air rushing past the plane’s door is so familiar that Babe actually feels a smile play across his lips as he jumps, his stomach giving another somersault that’s nearly all exhilaration. Watching parachutes flutter open around him and tug the bulky silhouettes attached into slower, more graceful arcs of descent, watching the sky absolutely fill with these figures that look more like dandelion seeds than soldiers – he’s no poet, certainly no renaissance man, but Babe thinks it’s about the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He’s quietly awestruck until he remembers that he should pay closer attention to the ground rushing up at him before he breaks both legs on his landing.

It’s hard to focus on the task of finding a particular someone in the sea of matching helmets and uniforms that is the company, even if that someone should be wearing an armband that’ll set him apart, because Babe’s suddenly so very aware that he is _fighting in a war._ Still, the veterans move carefully rather than outright cautiously, and there’s a very relaxed feeling in the air as they crouch in a grassy ditch and await orders; Babe can see people moving up and down the haphazard line they form and decides to creep forward a bit as well, flashing his disarming smile any time someone looks at him like maybe he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be.

And it’s worth those looks in the end, when he gets to drop down beside the Doc and flash him the same smile.

*

Granted, the jump did go considerably better, and Holland doesn’t exactly sound or look like a hotbed of enemy activity yet – despite all that, though, Eugene thinks people are being a bit too casual. Laughing and chattering at full volume, stealing drinks to hand out, wandering wherever they please…

“Hey, Gene! Made it, all in one piece, everything accounted for.”

Eugene will absolutely never mistake that voice for anyone else’s again. He knows it’s Heffron from the word _Gene_ , but still gives himself the time afforded by the rest of Heffron’s words before turning to acknowledge him; the way his smile makes Eugene’s chest tighten suggests that he’ll never stop feeling those smiles more acutely than physical blows, either. Somehow he does manage a smile back, though it’s no more than his customary half-grin with lips closed.

“Easy, Heffron,” he chides the redhead softly as he thumps onto his rear end, then clambers back into a crouch with a good-natured chuckle. “I know there ain’t no one settin’ a good example here, but we’re still at war.”

One of the many things Eugene has yet to discover about how the other Easy men relate to him is the fact that his disapproval strikes them more severely than a mother’s frown. That uneasy energy shadows the faces of all those in earshot at his words, and he’s just thinking that he couldn’t have been _that_ harsh when he catches Heffron looking at him with the big, wounded eyes of a sulking toddler.

Oh, honestly.

Rather than take the words back, he pulls his pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and holds it out to Heffron, who slides one free with a grin that seems to say, at least in Eugene’s interpretation, that all’s well. The two of them only get in a couple of puffs before everyone’s called on to advance across the nearby field, but it’s enough to alleviate the tension between them, and Heffron’s back to his chatty self as they slowly fan out and wade through waist-deep grasses toward Eindhoven.

“Nothin’ to it. Nothin’ _like_ it, either. Ever been on a roller coaster, Gene?” Before Eugene can answer, before his eyes have even flicked over in mild curiosity, Heffron steamrolls on with his impressions of skydiving. “Me, I went on the Pippin when I was a kid, and that 90 footer – feels like you’re a goner for sure, droppin’ like that when you’re just a li’l squirt. It’s scary as hell looking down from the top. Kinda was before jumpin’ outta that plane, too.”

“Yeah? Didn’t sound like you were scared this time,” Eugene says mildly, one hand still clenched around the top of his aid kit as he walks but most of his attention otherwise directed at Heffron. Considering that he’s just rambling, his trains of thought appearing to run on endlessly spiderwebbing tracks that relate in only the loosest of ways, Heffron is also a very engaging conversation partner. He’s _lively_ , eyes sparkling with reflections of the day’s diffuse sunlight and voice rising and falling in that harsh, slightly nasal accent that Eugene finds easier on his ears this time around. 

“Not for long, but I was,” Heffron admits with a sheepish little shrug, before turning his entire body until he’s shuffling along _sideways_ so that he can look Eugene right in the face. “Thought about what you said, just ‘See you on the ground,’ like you didn’t need to reassure me ‘cause of course I was gonna make it. And you don't really seem like the type to blow smoke up my ass, y'know?”

Yet again, Heffron’s managed to leave Eugene ridiculously flustered with the most innocuous of statements. He used Eugene’s words for comfort in a moment of fear? Yes, Eugene did choose his words to have exactly that effect, but it’s the fact that Heffron always seems to hold him in his mind for so much longer than he’d expect that keeps throwing him off-balance. 

Heffron is lively, handsome, winning, effortlessly charming – he’s got to have more interesting options for company, for his thoughts and attention, than placid, dishwater dull Eugene Roe. 

Eugene actually sags a bit with relief when he spots Sergeant Martin moving up behind (or to one side, but at Heffron’s back because of his absurd side-shuffling gait) Heffron with a sour expression, which is bound to mean that he won't have to stumble through a painfully shy response. “Don’t let me interrupt the tea party, Heffron,” Martin mutters, making Heffron nearly jump out of his skin and Eugene struggle mightily to keep the corners of his mouth in place. 

“Sorry sir, won’t happen again sir,” Heffron blurts out as Martin strides on ahead of them, but he’s already got a grin playing on his lips by the time the sergeant’s out of view. He glances sidelong at Eugene, apparently checking to see if he’ll be met with disapproval or mutual amusement; that, of course, just strengthens Eugene’s resolve not to smile.

“You earned that,” he says flatly, looking away just in time to miss another of Heffron’s brilliant smiles as he dissolves into breathy giggle-laughter. 

Ahead of them, the men have begun to slow and gather in a tight clutch against one side of a fence. Both Eugene and Heffron end up craning their heads this way and that, looking for some source of information on the hold up, until another of the replacements – Eugene immediately recognizes the boyishly soft face and vivid blue eyes, but can’t put a name to them – pushes through the crowd to reach Heffron with a slightly puzzled smile. 

“One of the locals is flying an orange flag,” the replacement murmurs, pointing up to a high, high window in a nearby farmhouse. “I know white is surrender, but what’s orange?”

By now the other men have started to move back toward the road and, eventually, the town of Eindhoven. Randleman passes them with one of his ever-present cigars wedged into the corner of his mouth and claps Heffron on the shoulder with one hand, the replacement (Miller, Randleman calls him, and Eugene is finally able to supply a first name with that prompting – James Miller) with the other: “Looks like we’re off the hook for this one, boys,” he says with something almost like joviality in his usual gruff tone. 

“Must mean somethin’ good!” Heffron declares, hurrying on ahead with Miller at his heels. Eugene hangs back, watching them jog up to meet the crowd with an odd prickle of apprehension building at the base of his spine; he doesn’t want to bring down the younger men’s excitement, but something about this feels strange.

And quietly, in a corner of his mind that’s constantly generating thoughts he’d never share with anyone else, he thinks that Heffron _should_ be running off in excitement with a contemporary like that. It’s in his nature, and it’s exactly the kind of experience he won’t find in Eugene’s company. This scenario is better for him; it’s _right_.

Which means, by extension, that Eugene is wrong. But that’s why he keeps such thoughts to himself.

*

Of course Babe can’t say this for certain, but so far he’s convinced that this must be the best war in history. 

And yes, he’s aware of what an irreverent thought that is to have about _any_ war, but he can hardly be expected to maintain an appropriately grave mindset when he’s being whisked down Eindhoven’s main street with beautiful women kissing him on the mouth, old men shaking his hand, even children staring at him as though they all flew in like Superman rather than marching. All of the men have been swept up in the intoxicating energy, even those trying to urge them through the crowd giving in to occasional, modest smiles because the gratitude is so overwhelming.

All he’s done is jump out of a plane and cross a field, and Babe already feels like a conquering hero. He’s never known an ego boost like this before. 

He turns to say something to Miller and finds his friend already lost to the swarms of people, but no sooner has he noticed than someone is grabbing _his_ arm and pulling him into an impromptu dance. “Careful,” he tells the beautiful blonde with a wicked smirk, “you picked yourself one hell of a dancer,” and she clearly doesn’t understand English but her face says she gets the gist. The singing all around them doesn’t exactly set much of a beat, but her delighted shriek when he twirls her away from him and back in close sounds like music to his ears.

Someone else curls her cool, slim fingers around his wrist, and he barely has time to call out an apology to his dancing doll before another woman tugs him aside to pose for a picture with a cluster of children. Like he’s some kind of celebrity! The idea that these people could have a picture with his face in it on the mantel for generations, in memory of the day when the Americans liberated Eindhoven…

… it’s heady stuff for a young man like him, especially when the euphoria hasn’t yet been tempered by any sort of tragedy. 

He’s got several shades of lipstick smeared around his lips and even more peppered across his cheeks in lip prints of all shapes and sizes when the man in front of him suddenly freezes in place, causing him to crash into his back in disoriented confusion. The noises around them have changed as they’ve moved further into the town, switched to chanting rather than singing, but Babe’s assumed that it’s some kind of cheer; now, as another private he hasn’t yet met gestures into a circle that’s opened up in one section of the throng, Babe’s high spirits crash land and catch fire so swiftly that the ashes blow away in seconds. 

“What the – what are they _doing_?” Babe’s voice is small, mostly caught behind a thick lump in his throat, so he’s not entirely surprised when no one appears to hear him amidst all the chanting. He doesn’t want to watch these women get stripped of their clothing, have their foreheads marked with swastikas and their hair cut off, but he also can’t look away. Swastikas mean Nazis, of course, so these women must have some connection to the Germans… but even knowing that, the entire display makes him feel queasy. There’s punishing the enemy, there’s taking them prisoner, and then there’s gleefully dehumanizing them. 

He’s distantly aware of someone calling to him, another hand tugging at his wrist, but he’s spotted something on the opposite side of the circle that has him frozen in place: his dancing doll, hair mussed and red lips curled into an unpleasant smile, is chanting along with the rest of the crowd. As one of the targeted women stumbles in front of her, she reaches down and rips her blouse open, then spits in her face.

“Jesus _Christ_ …”

“Come _on_ , Heffron,” insists a deep voice with an unmistakable honeyed lilt in its vowels, but a tone nearly full enough of poison to cancel that out; the tug at his wrist comes much more insistently, and Babe realizes that Gene is the one who’s been trying to pull him away. Not more revellers, about whom he’s feeling much more ambivalent now, but one of his fellow men. A friend. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so relieved to be dragged from a party. 

When they’re unable to find any officers, which means they have no real direction in all this chaos, Gene just tugs Babe into an alley behind a row of the bizarrely tidy houses that seem to make up all of Eindhoven. Again he shakes out a cigarette for Babe, who considers telling him that he’s got plenty of his own, but the gesture is too inexplicably charming for Babe to risk putting an end to it; he’ll just have to make sure he’s there with his pack held out when Gene runs out. 

“Did you see that back there?” Babe demands, a slightly shrill edge to his voice. “It’s not right, treating dames like that – and in a little town like this, that’s gotta be a buddy’s sister or best girl -”

Gene cuts him off with a single, firm statement: “Musta been collaborators.” Babe can only blink at him in disbelief, like he’s seeing the man for the first time.

“You think that excuses it?!”

“No, it don’t excuse it,” Gene snaps with far more fire in his voice than Babe would ever have imagined possible. For the first time, Babe notices that Gene’s cigarette is trembling between his long index and middle fingers as he lifts it back to his lips but doesn’t take another drag. “Don’t excuse it, but explains it.”

Babe can see the difference, when he really thinks about it, but that still doesn’t make the scene sit well with him; Gene must see something of his stubborn opposition in his expression, because he just sighs out a lungful of smoke and gives Babe a tired look. Not weary, not in any condescending way: just _tired._

“They been occupied, Heffron. We don’t know what that’s like. We don’t know how the Nazis treated ‘em. We don’t know _nothin’_ ‘bout this war yet, not really.” A haze of smoke lingers in the air around him, haloing his pale, raw-boned face, and suddenly he seems a lot older. Babe wants to say they know right from wrong, and which side is the enemy, but the statement seems as childish as it is true in the face of Gene’s more nuanced view. How _does_ one judge occupied neutrals in Babe’s black and white framework?

With a trace of bitterness, Babe thinks that shades of grey must be a nice luxury for medics to have, considering they won’t have to kill anyone. But Gene doesn’t look like it’s giving him any relief – very much the opposite, actually – and that causes Babe to keep all of his thoughts to himself on this one. He just leans against the nearest wall, slowly sliding down to sit heavily on his heels; he’s expecting Gene to walk away after their little almost-argument, and blinks with no small amount of surprise when the other man sits down beside him instead, feeling himself start to beam stupidly before he can stifle the smile into something more subdued. 

Of course Gene notices the quick change of expression, blinking right back at him with the adorably, solemnly confused frown that Babe has already decided is also uniquely Gene Roe’s. “What’s that for?”

“I dunno,” Babe says with an awkward, one-shouldered shrug. “I’m just – glad you’re here.”

As he keeps staring at Babe in bemusement, Gene’s face slowly flushes pink right across the cheekbones, then all the way to the tops of his ears. He's not some wise man, Babe thinks, not an old soul struggling with right and wrong - as much as the war already seems to be weighing on him, Gene's still just a quiet sort of guy who happens to analyze things a _lot_ more than Babe and blushes at the slightest hint of a compliment.

Then Gene smiles, the tiny upward tilt at the corners of his lips as uniquely him as his frown, and Babe realizes how much he wants to cultivate both things: not the smile and the frown, but the smile and the _blush._ He just looks prettier than any man should like that. 

... happier. _Happier_ than any man should. It's only natural that someone should want to see a friend happy, especially one with a near-constant frown.

Gene's voice yanks him out of his thoughts at exactly the right time. "Glad to be here, Heffron."

" _Babe,_ " he insists again when it occurs to him that Gene hasn't called him Babe once since they got to Holland. Or ever, for that matter. The longer Gene holds out, the more important it feels to Babe, for some reason.

"C'mon, we better go find an officer." Climbing to his feet, Gene brushes dirt off his rear end, then flicks his cigarette and offers his other hand to help Babe up. "And you look like you already been enough people's babe today. Heffron."

For the first time, it occurs to Babe how colorful his face must be after having so many women kiss him in so many different spots, and it's his turn to blush.

"Oh, to hell with you! I can get up myself!" There's no real anger or heat behind his exclamation, and Gene obviously takes it in the intended spirit, because it makes him _laugh._ Not much more than a quick puff of air, but definitely a laugh. Slightly dazed, Babe adds that to the list as he trails after Gene, and redoubles his determination to see it through. 

Whenever he gets the chance in this damn war, he's dedicating his time to making Gene smile, blush, and laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. WOW, thank you SO MUCH for the warm reception, everyone who left me kudos and comments! Honestly, thank you to everyone who read my first chapter, period. This one has me wondering if my pace is maybe a touch slow, to put it mildly - these are both fascinating characters to explore, together and apart, but I don't want to lose any sense of narrative flow because I get bogged down in that exploration. As always, any and all feedback is appreciated! Even if it's just that you'd like to see more than 10 minutes of an episode covered per chapter ;)
> 
> Chapter title is from Keep On Walking by Passenger.


	3. Oh Darling, My Heart's on Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Babe faces more sobering truths of war, Eugene doesn't quite know how to guide him through the experience, but maybe he doesn't have to try so hard. Maybe it's good enough just to be there, just as he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a work of fiction inspired by, and intended only to represent, the roles in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers as played by the actors. No disrespect is meant to the real men of Easy Company. 
> 
> Step right up to watch Babe be a cranky brat and Eugene fall so hard it's a wonder he doesn't break his nose. This chapter is heavy on Babe POV almost to the point of being unbalanced, but it's mostly dialogue, because he needed a stern talking to. Again, thank you to everyone who's on this ride with me! WE'RE FINALLY OUT OF EPISODE FOUR WITH THIS CHAPTER!
> 
> Chapter title is from Heart's On Fire, by Passenger. If you're sensing a theme in the titles, you're correct.

After the quiet unease of Eindhoven, the creeping dread that seemed to seep through Eugene’s pores until he felt it to the marrow of his bones, there’s a refreshing immediacy about being back in active combat. He could never claim to enjoy it, or feel the adrenaline-fueled, daredevil rush he sees in the eyes of some men; quite to the contrary, he finds it strangely soothing to chase the cries of _Medic! Medic!_ and perform a task for which he’s been extensively trained and not even have the time or option to think of doing anything else. 

Despite the fact that his task is to save the lives of his fellow men, the whole thing becomes rote after awhile, and he can’t deny the comfort of repeating that cycle again and again until he hears cries to fall back. After what he saw in Eindhoven, and the mess he made of trying to explain it all to Heffron when he could barely grasp it himself, he prefers to keep questions and even personal choices to a minimum. 

There have already been those he couldn’t save, and wounds that will linger forever in his memory – he doesn’t know how he never paused to consider a bullet to the neck until he had blood _pumping_ through his fingers as though he were holding an actual perforated heart – but nothing has brushed too close because no one has gotten too close. His system has worked perfectly for him until now.

Because now Heffron’s gone so pale that Eugene feels as though he should be able to see through him, shuffling numbly away from his replacement friends only to glance over at his veteran friends with a look that says he doesn’t expect to find much more comfort there. Randleman is MIA, Eugene knows that much, but what else has happened? It’s like having his blood swapped out for ice water, seeing Heffron look so stricken. 

“Heffron,” Eugene says quietly, hovering just behind his left shoulder, uneasy not because he expects a negative reaction but because he hasn’t got any idea what to expect. At first Heffron seems to look right through him, and _that’s_ horrible in a totally unique way, but then he pulls in a long breath and hitches his mouth into some semblance of a smile.

That’s worse. For all that Eugene doesn’t like to see Heffron without a smile, this proves that genuine sadness is better than simulated levity.

“Bull’s still gone,” Heffron finally says in a tone that almost manages to sound conversational, marred only by a shrill edge Eugene’s never heard in his voice before. “Bill says no one’s dead if there’s no body, but…”

But someone else _is_ dead, someone with relevance. Heffron doesn’t need to finish that statement for Eugene to understand. He knows that there were casualties, of course, but he also knows that they didn’t all have time to call for him in the unmitigated chaos of the battle, and he had Lieutenant Compton to watch over while any information was being shared.

Unconsciously, Eugene takes a step closer, then another, moving into Heffron’s field of view and laying his hand gently on Heffron’s shoulder. “Who was it?” 

No, wait. Eugene saw him speaking to Garcia and Hashey, but _only_ Garcia and Hashey, which means –

“Miller,” Heffron confirms just as the name resurfaces in Eugene’s memory. James Miller, with the vivid blue eyes, and the face that made him look far too young to enlist at all; it feels like just earlier in the day that Eugene saw him chase after Heffron to see what awaited them in Eindhoven, and to Heffron, it can’t feel like much longer since they sat together in Aldbourne or even since they met in camp. 

How unkindly Eugene thought about the replacements that night in Aldbourne, looking down on them all in their tight groupings, assuming they stuck together for defensive reasons when they’d probably just formed the same sort of comradeship that the Toccoa men had before them. 

“We weren’t even that -” The vague, helpless way Heffron gestures when he can’t find the words gives Eugene an irrational urge to grab that hand and just hold it tightly in both of his; he ends up with one hand clutching the bag at his side as though he were about to charge back into battle, the other wrapped around its strap where it crosses his chest. “- not like a guy’s gotta be your best pal for you to feel bad, right? But he just got here, _we_ just got here, and he’s already -”

When Heffron just trails off again, Eugene can’t keep himself from setting a hand back on his shoulder and giving it a light, comforting squeeze. That much, at least, has already proven to be fine between them. “You don’t need a reason,” he says once he’s reasonably sure Heffron has given up on finishing his thought, even though he thinks Heffron gave up a lot of the reason quite clearly by switching out _he_ for _we_ when he did.

“That is why no one likes replacements, ain’t it?” Now Heffron’s voice is going places Eugene doesn’t like at all, too shrill and getting loud enough to bring down punishment from one of the officers. “No point in getting close to guys who’ll probably just –”

“ _Hey,_ ” Eugene says with that brittle, quiet ferocity he’s only begun to hear in his voice since life became both much more fragile and solely his purview in one fell swoop. “There ain’t no bigger target on you than us. You start thinkin’ something’s bound to happen and you can’t stop it, it will.”

“… _us?_ ”

Something about the way Heffron repeats that single word, eyes narrowing and hackles raising, causes Eugene to bristle in kind. “Yeah, Heffron, us. Why?”

“Oh, nothin’,” Heffron says far too casually to be genuine, and sure enough, his next words turn the ice water in Eugene’s veins to pure molten fire: “You just talk a real big game about understandin’ all this sometimes, considering you ain’t even here to fight. The Krauts _can’t_ shoot right at you, what the _fuck_ target have you got on your back, huh?”

“Heffron -” Eugene gasps, caught between disbelief and a purer rage than he’s felt in a very, very long time, but Heffron doesn’t even let him say any more. 

“Christ, you really are a piece of work sometimes, Doc,” he interrupts furiously, muttering from between tightly clenched teeth, then turns on his heel and walks away with his spine so rigidly straight that Eugene imagines the lightest touch snapping it clean in half.

Then he remembers belatedly that he shouldn’t think about touching Heffron at all, not even – or maybe _especially_ not – with such uncommon levels of anger pulsing through him, as one of those pulses takes on a very particular sort of heat that makes him seek out a spot far from the rest of the men to calm his nerves.

Out of line, he thinks, pressing one closed fist carefully into the grass to keep from making some aggressive, pointless gesture of fury like punching the ground. That was completely and totally out of line. He was only trying to offer Heffron some support.

But he has to admit to himself that it was also completely and totally _correct_ , at least when it comes to the plain facts, and that makes him wonder if he shouldn’t just stick to offering cigarettes when it comes to Heffron. 

And that makes him wonder if he shouldn’t just keep his distance, as he swore he would at the beginning, but it keeps feeling less like a viable option every time he revisits it again.

*

Even in his current temper, Babe knows better than to let off a full head of steam at Bill when he finds out that he’s just seen off a rescue party intent on finding Bull Randleman. Having an NCO just up and vanish is no small issue, especially not when some of the men, like Bill and particularly Martin, have been even more out of sorts than the others ever since. After what they saw from the Krauts today, no one’s likely to be thrilled if they find out about the clandestine mission, but no one’s likely to blame them for the initiative, either – if they come back alive. It’s not a nice thing to consider from any angle.

Babe just turns his excess energy to digging in with Bill instead of facing any of the thoughts battering around inside his skull, the blade of his shovel piercing the ground with a good deal more violence than necessary and dirt flying wildly enough to earn him a few glares before Bill finally puts a hand on his arm to still his movements.

“ _Enough_ , Babe, you’re gonna fuckin’ bury the rest of us if you keep that up.” Bill casts an eye over their work so far, then sighs and appears to decide their foxhole will do, settling in and then glancing back up at Babe with a frown. “It’s eatin’ at all of us. You wanna run out and find Web and the rest of ‘em, go ahead, but if you’re stickin’ around you better put on your grown-up skivvies before you really piss someone off.”

Those harsh, crude words, which Babe knows full well are much more unkind than Gene’s, still act as a salve rather than an irritant. It’s partially because Bill sounds like home, where everyone’s constantly busting your chops to show they care instead of getting all weird and over-earnest, but it’s also because Bill _knows_. He’s been in the real crossfire since his boots hit the ground, and the crossfire won’t stop to let him pass by.

Babe really did think his resentment about Gene preaching from his position of medic passed in Eindhoven, but apparently he was wrong. 

“Where does he get off, anyway?” Babe asks himself a propos of nothing, at least in regards to any conversation happening outside of his head, which earns him a deeply confused look from Bill – but then the older man just nods in a knowing way that makes Babe bristle even harder. “What’s that all about?”

“Babe,” Bill says, his tone and sharply arched eyebrows making it perfectly clear that Babe is about to be talked to like an unruly toddler whether he likes it or not, “I’m a lotta things. I get _called_ a lotta things, too, most of ‘em nowhere near as nice as the things I actually am. But no one even _calls_ me blind, stupid, or clueless.”

His lips pressed into a thin line, Babe thinks he’s never understood why people use the word _simmering_ for some types of anger quite as clearly as he does now: he feels exactly like he's about to boil over rather than explode, release oceans of scalding hot rage that will consume far more completely than fire or shrapnel.

“Is this comin’ around to a point, Bill?”

“Yeah, pointy as your fuckin’ head. Babe, you’ve been following the Doc around since before the jump, and far be it for me to pick your friends for you, but – Luz wasn’t all wrong.” Bill smirks a little at that, tilting his head back to squint up at the stars. “For once. Nice and friendly are two different things, and when you got one without the other, you got a guy who probably ain’t lookin’ for any friends.”

God, he wants to argue with that so badly, but – all the evidence of Bill’s words is right there in his interactions with Gene to date. The medic’s been nice, like Bill said, chatted with him, even teased him a little, but he can’t even take the most basic step of using a nickname instead of a family name. All his teasing about it could just be to hide the fact that he’s not interested in being that chummy, since he’s still too nice to say something like that outright.

Babe’s never really been held at arm’s length like that before, and he finds it’s not a feeling he likes in the slightest. Better to be told to fuck off, honestly – at least he’d know where he stands. 

“Babe, for Christ’s sake, sulk any harder and I’m gonna choke on the smoke comin’ outta your ears,” Bill says a bit more wearily. “What happened? How’d Doc Roe, of all people, manage to piss you off?”

Well – when Bill sounds like that, and puts it like that, Babe feels sort of stupid about the whole thing. But he had some _good points_ , so he’s not going to shrug this off like it was nothing. What do guys like Bill know about Gene, anyway? Even if they’ve been in the company with him longer, they’ve never tried to be friends with him like Babe has.

“He keeps talkin’ to me like I’m a damn kid,” Babe says in a surly grumble, poking at the opposite wall of the foxhole with the toe of his boot. “Any time something around here gets to me, he’s got some big speech –”

“Speech, huh.” Bill barely has to sound dubious for Babe to realize what an inappropriate word he's chosen.

“… fine, not speech, but some – words of wisdom bullshit for why I shouldn’t feel that way. He can’t even understand half the shit we do out here when he’s just a medic.”

Something clicks into place in Babe’s thoughts like the puzzle piece misplaced for so long that it's been given up for lost, and as he takes in the full picture, he sees the fault in his words right before Bill speaks up.

“So... correct me if I got this wrong, Babe…” Despite those words, Babe has a feeling he won’t get to speak on his own behalf, and Bill immediately proves that suspicion correct: “… but you’re pissed off at the Doc for trying to comfort you? Give you some kinda support?”

Yeah. That’s exactly what’s occurred to Babe, and now he’s digging his heel into the dirt across from him, sinking to the depth of sulk one can only reach when their initial sulk has been declared unreasonable. 

“Does he gotta be so _bossy_ about it?” Babe finally huffs, then rolls his eyes when Bill shoots a very pointed look at his feet, then back at him. “I’m restless.”

“You’re acting like a damn kid.”

“Aw, Bill –”

“No, it’s true, you’d be stompin’ your feet if you weren’t sat on your ass and then this’d really be a tantrum.” Bill seems to know, or at least anticipate, that he’s finally pushed hard enough for Babe to be about sick of it, because he claps a heavy hand down on Babe’s shoulder before he can storm off. “Don’t get me wrong, Babe, this ain’t personal. You’re a likable guy, and I bet it’s easy for you to make friends. Right?”

When Babe realizes that Bill’s waiting for him to answer, he just nods sullenly.

“Well, this one’s gonna take some work. Put the work in or give up, just quit bitchin’ about it. If Doc’s tryin’ to comfort you when you ain’t got a bullet or piece of shrapnel in you somewhere or other, he’s showing more interest in you than he has anyone else around here.”

Babe can hardly believe he just got such a thorough lecture from Wild Bill Guarnere, of all damn people. There are definitely officers in the company who already feel like surrogate parents to him, the sort he can picture wiping a smudge of dirt from his face or straightening his collar in a different life, but Bill has never been one. Although he must admit, when he thinks back over the content of the lecture, that Bill spoke more as a brother than anything: rough, coarse, brutally honest, and in his best interests in every way, but without sounding like he had a natural position of authority on the matter. 

And he's right. Babe’s managed to convince himself that he doesn’t mean all that much to Gene, not as a friend or even a fellow company member, and that just isn’t true. In fact, he’d barely stepped away from his conversation with Garcia and Hashey when Gene was right at his side, checking in with his cautious kindness – as if Babe had called for a medic to soothe his nerves, when all he did was look alarmed at the news. That’s something to consider. 

That’s a lot to consider. So much that when the first pale veins of daybreak begin to streak the star-speckled sky, Babe still hasn’t managed a single moment of sleep.

*

There’s something very different about the sunrises here, Eugene has come to notice. He assumes that the daytime sky isn’t always such a pallid, washed out blue, that it’s somehow caused by the steady encroachment of winter, but he would never have guessed that the season could even leech color from the violent golds and purples and reds he expects to see at dawn. It’s all so austere, a bit unsettling but also befitting the telltale chill he now feels on the morning air, so much more than the infinitesimal drop in humidity and heat that those from Louisiana call “winter.”

He’s got his face tilted up to the sky when he hears soft footsteps behind him, the first stirrings he’s heard from the sleeping men dug in around him since he woke, and then a self-consciously joking whisper: “Flash.”

“Thunder,” he answers mildly, refusing to acknowledge the way his stomach sinks to his toes when he recognizes Heffron’s voice from that single word. He doesn’t even look up, but does shuffle to one side just enough to make room for Heffron if he’s planning to stay awhile, because he doesn’t want to look outright petulant. 

Sure enough, Heffron hops down into the foxhole and sits beside Eugene, extending his legs a bit awkwardly to press his feet against its opposite wall. Eugene spends quite awhile staring at his boots, then his long legs (he’d bet money that Heffron has knobbly knees under those baggy fatigues, but won’t let that train of thought carry him to a mental image of Heffron wearing their Toccoa PT shorts, or even less), before finally lifting his eyes to look him properly in the face.

As it turns out, the thin light _is_ just gold enough to make Heffron’s hair look like burnished bronze. Swallowing hard, Eugene looks away again, then feels a twinge of guilt in the pit of his stomach when that causes Heffron to clear his throat in a guilty sort of way.

“I was a jackass yesterday,” he announces without preamble, and with that particular brand of disarming bluntness that always leaves Eugene speechless. After waiting a few seconds for Eugene to answer, Heffron leans in until their shoulders touch, and goosebumps ripple outward from that point of contact to cover every inch of Eugene’s skin. “I’m sorry, Gene. I’m probably a jackass a lot, y’know? Just used to people being used to _me_.”

“You were upset,” Eugene finally says with a half-shrug, not wanting to shift the shoulder still pressed tight against Heffron’s. That unexpected apology has him feeling warm and lightheaded, the way he feels when he’s one drink away from doing something stupid and two away from ceasing to care about his actions; it’s terrifying and exhilarating to have a person cause that feeling with a few words and a small, warm press of touch.

Heffron snorts in response. “You’re gonna let me off the hook that easy, huh?”

“No hook. Someone died and you were upset, and I made it worse. I only know how to handle the physical shit, Heffron.” 

If there’s one thing Eugene doesn’t ever like to admit, it’s when he’s left feeling helpless, particularly when that help is for another rather than himself. But Heffron’s self-deprecating apology isn’t something that should be left without an admission of his own, so he does, and the remorseful twist in his voice even takes him by surprise.

“Gene,” Heffron says quietly, sounding just as taken aback, “you’re a medic, not a shrink. That’s all you gotta do, handle the physical shit.” 

When Eugene looks back up at Heffron, there’s an unfamiliar, deeply conflicted downward tug to his pale eyebrows. He opens his mouth, hesitates, then adds: “And just let me bitch when I bitch. It ain’t ever that bad, you don’t gotta worry about me when I’m just running off at the mouth.”

Eugene doesn’t think he’s ever been given such a difficult task before: ignore Heffron’s obvious distress in a situation like yesterday’s, simply because he says it isn’t usually anything serious? There’s a reason he’s taken so naturally to his work as a medic, and it’s not because he generally ignores people in some kind of suffering. 

But this is exactly what he was wondering yesterday – how to handle Heffron when he, as he puts it, runs off at the mouth and Eugene doesn’t seem to have any skill with finding the right words – and now he’s been given an answer. He can’t reject it out of hand. After all, he was at the point of considering a complete split from Heffron’s company other than in his capacity of medic, and that thought still makes his chest ache more than he quite knows how to interpret.

“Just let you bitch,” Eugene echoes with a faint smile. “Think I can do that. I can try, anyhow.”

“Good,” Heffron says, like he always seems to say when he finds out they’re still alright, with such genuine relief and happiness that Eugene has to fight off a blush. “I – I meant it when I said I was glad you were here, y’know. And I’m glad we’re friends.”

Eugene has a feeling those words are just a bit too frank even for Heffron to speak comfortably, because they sound difficult for him to pull from his mouth into the open air, like the last and most tenacious of a child’s baby teeth. Once they’re out, though, they leave Eugene staring hard at Babe’s feet once again, because he didn’t realize what a milestone that word would be until it _did_ find its way into the open. 

They’re friends. They’re officially, by Babe’s own declaration, friends. If before Eugene felt warm and lightheaded, he now feels light from head to toe, dangerously close to detaching from his own physical form.

“Me too,” he answers lamely, his tongue the only part of his body that still feels heavy, like a slab of stone in his mouth. Those words seem to be enough for Babe, though, because his eyes immediately light up, something both relieved and cheeky dancing in them. 

“It’s gettin’ cold as a bastard in the mornings, ain’t it? I’m not looking forward to winter when – hey, whatta you think you’re doing?” Babe stops in the process of getting his cigarettes out of his pocket to slap Eugene’s hand away from his own, making him jump in surprise and stare at Babe with wide eyes. “Shit, Gene! You’re too easy to startle, y’know that? Just lemme give you a smoke this time, I’ve hardly touched my pack since we hit the ground thanks to you.”

_Oh._ Cheeks burning with embarrassment, he pulls his shoulders in toward his ears as he waits for Babe to offer a cigarette, then tucks it between his lips and goes back to rummaging in his pockets for his lighter.

One jacket pocket, then the other. Then the side pockets of his fatigues, high on his hips. Then several other, far less likely spots. Finally, he sighs and turns to Babe with a small, rueful grin.

“Not to impose or nothin’, but I’m gonna need your lighter, too.”

“Gene! Ain’t you ever satisfied?” Babe almost cackles, but then his face falls as he seems to remember something: “I dunno if you’re gonna get any action out of it, though, I barely did. Almost outta fluid. Here, just use the end of my smoke.”

Eugene waits for Babe to hand him the cigarette dangling from his lips, but instead he just anchors it there between two fingers and leans forward; when Eugene realizes what he means for them to do, all the heat drains from his body before returning tenfold, like a rapid-fire fever chill. 

“Thanks,” Eugene says in the hoarse, thin remnants of what was once his voice, then leans in to close the space between them, pressing the tip of his cigarette to Babe’s and inhaling deeply.

As the paper and tobacco slowly spark to warm, glowing life, he feels his heart do the same.


	4. You Learn to Need the Things That Stop You Dreaming (Reprise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babe's come to a realization, Gene's come to a decision, and they've never been more at cross purposes than they are as they face down the looming specter of Bastogne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a work of fiction inspired by, and intended only to represent, the roles in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers as played by the actors. No disrespect is meant to the real men of Easy Company. 
> 
> For those who aren't hip to musical lingo: a reprise is when a specific passage of music plays again, and it's often used in musical theatre to compare the mood of the scene when the passage was first used to the mood much later in the show. In this case, things have shifted to a minor key in a major way.

Babe’s not sure how it happened. He’s not even sure _what_ has happened, really, or if it’s himself or Gene that’s to blame, or if no one can be blamed at all.

The one thing he knows for certain is that something changed between he and Gene Roe the morning they smoked together and watched the sun rise outside Nuenen - the where and when he does have nailed down in his mind, for all the slim comfort they offer. Ever since that morning, Gene’s shied away from him more uneasily than ever, but not with anything that looks like lingering anger over their fight or even his initial standoffish, cool politeness; he only looks at Babe sidelong now, never right in the eye, and keeps any words shared between them so abrupt and clipped on his end that…

… well, if anything, he seems _scared_. But the idea of Babe frightening or even intimidating him now, after he’s seen so much childish fear and weakness in Babe himself, is so ridiculous that Babe can’t come up with a single theory for why it could’ve happened.

That’s how it feels, though, and he can’t deny it. It feels as though Gene is scared to spend time in his company, which is even more painful than the aloofness Babe so badly misread while they first learned how to be friends.

He takes to watching Gene during their downtime, when they’re all exhausted from lack of sleep combined with the fast drop of adrenaline after a battle, a creeping feeling just beneath his skin like the first bitter taste of bile that lets someone know they’re about to lose their breakfast. It’s the sort of feeling even Babe knows is bad right away, selfish and foul and best purged as quickly as possible, but he can’t seem to shake it as he watches Gene hand out cups of coffee like he’s not just as drained as they are.

Never even drops the rigid posture that adds so much to his hyper-composed image, and who is that meant to impress, anyway? All the men are already gaga over him as a medic, and there’s a slow-spreading, unspoken reverence starting to develop around him along with that respect for his competence. And still he never takes a break, or even so much as a breath.

“Starin’,” someone murmurs as they pass behind where Babe is seated, adding in a hard flick to the back of his head as if to make sure he’s heard; he cranes his head around and shoots Luz a dirty look, which only earns him a laugh in response.

“Well, you _were_ ,” Sisk speaks up from beside him with an equitable shrug. More and more people keep taking on that casual way of referring to Gene Roe and the reactions he pulls from Babe with so little effort, like they have to point it out but won’t go so far as to insinuate anything. More often than not, Babe wishes they would just so that he’d have an excuse to let off some steam.

But Sisk doesn’t either, so Babe doesn’t feel the need to throw down. “Wanted to know what’s takin' him so long with the coffee,” he lies instead, stretching right out on the dry, dusty earth and staring at the pallid sky. “I know the stuff’s like sawdust and lukewarm piss but it’s the best we got right now.”

“Looks like sawdust and lukewarm piss is good enough for the captain,” Sisk says in an idle tone Babe doesn’t entirely like, prompting him to prop himself up on his elbows and squint off in the direction of Sisk’s gaze – just in time to see Gene hand Winters a cup like it’s the holy grail and the two smile at each other with uncommon warmth on both sides.

Babe’s stomach gives a hard lurch, and he ends up with a mouthful of very literal bile so acrid and strong that he has to spit off to one side.

Sisk just snorts at the bait having been taken, still not appearing to care what it might mean. “Lighten up, Babe. Didn’t you used to be a good time when you first got here?”

Oddly enough, those are the words that shake Babe out of his funk, or at least start the process of examining it more closely. Yeah, of course he used to be a good time! He’s always been a good time – easy to get along with, like Bill said, and able to mesh with the old-timers so easily that Garcia still expresses occasional envy over how tight he is with the likes of Guarnere and Toye. And he’d like to think he’s never stopped being a good time, or at least no more than can be accounted for by war having taken over their entire lives, but he knows damn well that’d be a useless lie.

It’s Gene. It’s still Gene, and it always has been, and Babe can’t ignore his intensity of feeling (from curiosity to euphoria over their being friends to bitter jealousy of Captain Winters, of all people, for getting a bit of extra care and attention) about the doc anymore. Letting it come out however it wants instead of making some attempt to understand is driving him, and everyone around him, completely crazy.

Or at the very least, everyone around him is starting to think of him as a drag, and Babe knows that nothing makes their back-breaking day and night slog worse than having a drag around. Time for him to lighten up, and as much as the thought makes his skin prickle with apprehension, step one of that process is straightening things out with Gene Roe.

*

_(“I won’t tell no one, but never, ever do nothin’ like that again.”_

_The redhead smiles. In actuality, he didn’t smile; he left quite respectfully once he realized his mistake, probably more relieved that Eugene didn’t get angry enough to destroy his life than eager to start a discussion about the situation. But this time the redhead smiles, and there’s something so wicked in it that Eugene can almost picture little red (fire engine red, not copper-red) horns peeking out from beneath his hair, almost catch a whiff of brimstone on his breath when he laughs._

_“What if I won’t tell nobody either? Still want me to leave?” There seem to be far too many teeth in his smile, all dazzling white and ravenous, but more than that Eugene notices that he doesn’t speak like a local. Some of the word usage is similar, but the delivery is sharp and nasal in a way that draws him in even as it hits him like a slap across the face._

_“No,” Eugene whispers, meaning that this can’t be happening, this man can’t be here, Babe Heffron can’t be in his little room in Baton Rouge holding him pinned against the wall and just a breath away from kissing him for a second time; “No,” and Babe hears him say that no, he doesn’t still want Babe to leave, that the secret is safe between them, and Eugene can’t bring himself to correct the misunderstanding even after a second kiss, or a third, or a fourth, or when they all blur together into one wet, hot mess of mouths –)_

Eugene’s maternal grandmother swore by the reading of dreams, which she said was essential to help people determine which struggles they needed to face and which they needed to shed before they could move on with their lives. There was nothing mystical about it, she said; thoughts just spoke a different language while a body slept, a more visual language, and she happened to be fluent.

Unfortunately, Eugene can’t quite convince himself that there are any hidden symbols in these dreams. They seem very literal to him, as well as very persistent and very unnecessary, undoing every bit of progress he’s able to make in his waking hours.

Progress toward what, exactly, he’s not always sure. Sometimes it feels like salvation, sometimes like no more than stalling the inevitable.

It’s just so much easier to give in to fatalism during a war. The Allies gain and lose ground, the company gains and loses men until familiar faces become alarmingly hard to seek out, and it all leads to a feeling of combined helplessness and apathy that gnaws at every single part of Eugene’s spirit. What they’re doing here in Europe can’t be both too random _and_ too predestined for them to have any influence, and flipping between the two is the act of a man who will believe anything that lets him keep wallowing rather than making progress. So why, he wonders, can’t he stop giving in to that sinking feeling that all this effort will prove to be of no consequence?

The drop in his spirit makes him irritable, especially with people who suddenly seem to put concentrated effort into making his job harder. Where once he would explain how someone could help with firm efficiency in his tone, he now finds himself snarling directly into the faces of everyone from a disdainful Liebgott, who hasn’t been seeing properly to his neck wound, to the equal parts astonished and abashed pair of Captains Winters and Welsh over confusion with morphine dosages. They’ll all allow him this leeway, even the officers, as long as he keeps performing at his nearly superhuman level to keep the men safe and healthy, but –

_(- “Please,” he starts to whimper, “please,” and that’s every bit as ambiguous as his use of “no” after Babe’s specific question, capable of meaning anything from please stop to please give me a second to breathe and process this to never, ever stop for as long as you live._

_Why does he bother saying anything at this point, when it’s only to pretend that he can lie to both of them at the same time and have either himself or Babe believe what he says over how his body keeps reacting –)_

\- but he doesn’t _want_ to ask for or require leeway. He doesn’t want to ask for anything. That’s not why he works as hard as he does, or why he’s here at all; in fact, it’s anathema to him on the same level as self-indulgent apathy, the idea of earning special treatment by doing nothing more than what he’s meant to do.

So he needs to mind his spirits and not let them drop so low, all while fending off the massive existential questions constantly brought up by the war, _and_ while resisting the temptation that is Babe Heffron’s existence. Others might find the task daunting, but he’s just glad to have a grip on what matters again - the act of giving as a gift unto itself, rather than a means to receiving anything in return.

He’s here to keep men alive. He has larger worries than the inside of his own head. 

_(- “Why’d you make me wait like this, Gene, you been wanting it all this time too, ain’t you?” Babe pants into the crook of Eugene’s neck as he ruts against him, and to be fair, he’s got some basis for his suspicions because Eugene’s meeting every single grind of Babe’s hips with his own._

_He knows it’s just verbal foreplay rather than any real sort of accusation, but the words still make his mouth go dry and his skin crawl with guilt. “I couldn’t,” he says, and then, “I can’t,” and Babe pulls away abruptly._

_“You are.”_

_Another misunderstanding, but neither of them realizes until Eugene blurts out: “I couldn’t stop, I can’t stop -”)_

Something jolts Eugene so hard that he not only wakes up, but also winds up fumbling to keep his seat rather than pitch forward into the lap of one of the soldiers. Disorientation hits him like a hunger pang until another hard jolt, one that causes all the freezing, aching bodies around him to rattle just as loudly as the truck, reminds him that they’re already on the road to their next field of battle.

Bastogne, the nearby city is called, and the woods around it Bois Jacques. There’s no comfort in the language from home, which sounds too round in some places and razor-sharp in others; it’s more isolating than anything, to have a familiar tongue fall so leaden on his ears.

He’s torn between needing air to stop his head from spinning and preferring the warmth of the truck when they reach the end of their ride, with only fifteen minutes for final preparation until they start the march to Bastogne. Despite his oath to shed the kinds of thoughts his dreams bring up before they can once again lead him away from his current path, he can’t help thinking that they’ve taken a bizarre turn - still far too literal, but bizarre all the same –

_(- “What do you really want, Gene?” Babe asks him, and there’s only one true response to that question:_

_“What does that matter?”)_

\- when suddenly he sees Babe with that same pale, ghostly look he had on his face at Nuenen. This time, though, Eugene doesn’t have to wonder what’s caused it: he can see them, plain as day, not dead but as close as the walking wounded could probably be. And this is the company they’re set to relieve, with everything from ammunition to cold weather gear to sheer manpower and morale nearly run dry, in temperatures lower than Eugene could’ve imagined before he left Louisiana. The fighting hasn’t even stopped long enough to wait for their arrival, as he can hear the rumble of shelling in the distant woods and see flames curling over the treetops.

What does that matter, indeed?

*

“Gene.”

Even Babe’s not sure why he feels the need to blurt out Gene’s name like that, his voice devoid of expression or emotion that might make the point any clearer, but he does know he has something to say. Now more than ever, with some horribly accurate facsimile of Hell awaiting them at the end of this road and little with which to fight back other than sheer force of will, he feels the need to say it in some form before the worst kind of too late can get in his way.

But they’re making direct eye contact. Why just say his name instead of getting to the point?

“Heffron,” Gene replies, solemn as his stony stare, and all the urgency instantly drains from Babe’s thoughts. Of course. _That’s_ why. 

His lips drawing into a thin line, Babe nods and turns his attention back to the hunched shoulders and grimly lowered head of the man in front of him. Before long, he finds that Gene has melted away into the crowd again. 

Babe can only hope that he’ll stay there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, THANK you for your patience and continued feedback, everyone reading this! I'm finally back on track, and I'm determined to finish this fic. I know this isn't really a full chapter, which is why I titled it like I did - I needed some space within the plot to catch up with their thought processes, especially Gene's, and this is how it came out. Next chapter we slam into Bastogne, though, so we'll definitely get out of their heads and back into some action and interaction.

**Author's Note:**

> This honestly came about because I thought it would be fun to play with everything that could've come before Bastogne and led to the BabeRoe dynamic we see in that episode, and that started me writing! Any and all feedback is most welcome, as I'm very much new to the fandom and, thus, writing in it! Even simple fact-correction is invaluable to me at this point, as is more complex characterization or structural advice.
> 
> Fic title is from Patient Love, chapter title is from Things That Stop you Dreaming, both by Passenger. Huge thanks to Shan for being such an excellent Babespiration and helping me wrap my brain around him a bit better.


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